The Consent of the Governed

“Government has become a paramecium, an amoeba whose prime directive is to grow and consume and multiply without knowledge of what it is supposed to be doing other than expanding. Or maybe the better metaphor is the zombie. The groping State smells those still alive and then plods and claws itself toward the few remaining living, in a mindless effort to incorporate or devour them. The zombie likes best the scent of the pizza franchiser or masonry contractor, not the welfare recipient or the Facebook executive.” (Link)

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I have a neighbor who is a small farmer, and in addition to growing feed corn and raising beef cattle, he raises healthy, free-range chickens and sells a few hundred fresh eggs a week at farmers markets and “buy local” Co-ops. That is, he used to. He quit last year when new regulations for food safety (instituted at the behest of factory egg farms) required all sorts of new certifications, inspections, and expensive equipment to comply with the laws. Paying for all the things the new laws will require was only cost-effective for a large operation (thus driving small farmers out of the market, which was precisely why the large operations lobbied for the bill). Rather than do all that work for virtually no gain, he butchered his flock and just stopped producing.

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Healthy young people, finally waking up to the fact that they are the financial pack-mules for Obamacare, have refused to sign up for the program in numbers that come anywhere close to balancing those they are supposed to subsidize. One wonders what they will do if they ever take a good, hard look at Social Security and Medicare: A double-earner couple (making the US median wage) who retired in 2010 will receive $310,000 more in benefits than they paid in to the system over the rest of their lives. The same couple, if the household was a single-earner married couple, will receive nearly half a million dollars more ($446,000) in benefits than they paid in during their lifetimes (Link). Just like Obamacare, the young are expected to produce in order to subsidize these costs. It will be interesting to see what happens if they ever figure this out.

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Taxpayers, particularly successful middle and upper-middle class business owners, are deliberately managing their income levels by working less and precisely calculating how much they need to give to charity in order to fall below Federal tax thresholds. Many have simply decided that, given increasing taxation and regulatory burdens, it is no longer in their interests to run a business at all and have closed-up shop entirely (Link).

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There is a property I particularly admire that I pass on my drive to work- beautiful fields, groves of woods along the property boundaries, and the whole thing gently sloping to the banks of a bend in the river. It used to be a working farm, but the family that bought it a few years ago realized that if they registered with the state as a farm and rented out the acreage, they would be subject to all sorts of restrictions and laws. Worse, the new “Food Safety Act” which is set to become law next year has granted unelected bureaucrats in numerous Federal agencies (from the FDA to the Department of Agriculture to the EPA) unprecedented control over privately held farmland, in particular the ability to force landowners to comply with expensive restrictions without recourse or appeal (Link). The choice was easy for the folks who own that farm- don’t farm anything, and don’t get on the watch list of half a dozen federal agencies. I think about how much that prime land could have produced as I drive past it. But I suppose there is a silver lining: eighty tillable acres that have been left fallow look quite pretty when the weedy grasses turn a golden tan in the fall.

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California’s productive middle class, realizing that the social compact constructed by Sacramento over the last few decades is one where they have enormous financial obligations and regulatory burdens and receive precious little in return aside the privilege of contributing even more, have left the state in droves: you could literally populate the state of Montana three times over with the number of middle-class earners who have left the People’s Republic of CA over the last 20 years (Link).

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Tri-City Herald, Kennewick WA: It took Bob Bertsch 25 years to build his construction business and just a day for it all to go away. Bertsch’s Ashley-Bertsch Group went on the auction block Friday at 9 a.m. By 4 p.m., Booker Auctions had sold off almost two dozen vehicles and trailers, tons of power tools and supplies, even the gas-fired fireplace in the office. Bertsch, 65, said he is down-sizing because the tax burden got too expensive to stay in business.

“I am tired of carrying all the tax load,” Bertsch said. “I renew 13 licenses here every year just so I can spend money in this city.” Bertsch makes no attempt to conceal his frustration with the costs government imposes on small businesses like his. “Government is killing small business. We used to have 24 employees at our peak. Now, all of those people who used to work here are in unemployment lines,” he said. (Link)

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What does any of this have to do with precious metals investing? I am of the opinion that it has quite a bit to do with it, actually. In each of the above cases, you see a two-part dynamic at work. Part 1 is a political system and its allied bureaucracies treating the earnings, property, and labor of the citizenry as its piggy bank and plaything- a government/state which bases its very existence on successfully conducting a continual process of plunder in order to fund a continuous expansion of its own power. Part 2 is the response of individuals to the particulars of this process, the quiet refusal to play the role of serf to the feudal lords of the state. In each case, from closing a business to working/earning less to letting productive farmland lie fallow, the dynamic is the same. The state says “Your productivity is mine” and the individual quietly responds “No, it isn’t” and changes their behavior accordingly. These people are, in a very practical way, refusing to aid and abet this process. They are withholding their consent.

The ‘consent of the governed’ isn’t created simply because a political party manages to make enough promises to enough special interest groups to bring in enough campaign cash to buy enough political ads to deceive enough people to squeak out a narrow electoral victory. It doesn’t result from the ability of unelected bureaucrats to use the coercive power of government and law to enforce their will. At the core of it, the ‘consent of the governed’ rests on each individual citizen consenting (or not) to go along with the demands being placed on them. Refusing to consent doesn’t require armed resistance, or showy protests and signs, or loud confrontations. It doesn’t require breaking the law or going to jail. All it takes is a refusal to participate in the activity being controlled.

At this moment, western central banks are engaged in a process of funding massive expenditures through monetizing (directly or indirectly) government debt. They create more Euros or Yen, or Pounds, or Dollars out of thin air and each time they do, they devalue your paycheck, pension, retirement account, and the change in your pocket. I understand they have the legal right to do this. I understand they are appointed by the elected representatives of the people and that this supposedly gives them the moral and practical authority to do so. But I have not been asked and did not give my approval to this process. My money is nothing more than a marker for my productivity and saved value, my efforts and risks, and indeed a significant portion of my life – and these things are mine. I do not consent to them being plundered in this way. So I remove my money from their system, as much as I am able. I buy gold and silver.

More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs. –James Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism (Princeton University Press, 2013)

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To your point of how this relates to precious metals- Silver and Gold will 'fix' the giant fake money apparatus that feeds the political system and those "agencies" that operate as you describe.

No need to fight what will soon die a natural death, but to tactically withdraw from the system, as you explain... yes indeed, and well said!!

And kudos to you for encouraging folks to stack and promote the Silver and Gold that always destroys fiat currencies, and the cancerous economies, financial systems, and fake markets that they produce...

In my earlier post I mentioned my friend having started his business more than 30 years ago. At that time he purchased (quite cheaply) some waterfront property in a very isolated area, which he subsequently used as a location for his business. Although his property use is and always has been consistent with the existing zoning, about 10 years ago the local municipality decided to rezone some of it and expropriate a prime chunk of his property to turn it into a park.

Of course, he balked at first with demands that were the equivalent of donating the land to local government. Government bureaucrats threatened to make his life Hell if he resisted, which pissed him off - so he fought. And make his life Hell they did.

The crazy thing is that he was willing to sell his property to them all along, provided they paid him a fair price. They refused, and in the ensuing years a legal battle raged. The government figured they could win by bleeding him dry with legal costs. They figured wrong. Although eventually they (government) won, and expropriated the prime chunk of land they wanted, my friend also "won" in the sense that government was finally forced in court to pay fair market value. And the legal costs associated with the battle also had to be paid by the government too, all $1.75 million worth.

(But who cares about the costs, because it's taxpayer money - so what does a government bureaucrat care? All that just to build a f*cking park.)

Yesterday at lunch we were sitting in the restaurant, by a window that happened to overlook his property. A one point he stopped talking, and was staring out the window. I turned to look, and asked what he was looking at. He pointed to 2 figures standing in the distance wearing hardhats and government issued vests with glow-in-the-dark "X"s on front and back.

"By-law enforcement officers" he said "Looking for violations."

"But what does it matter if they're inspecting the property they bought from you?"

"They didn't buy any property me" he clarified "They got what they did because they took it. And what they're now standing on now is MY land - the land they haven't taken yet - and they're now sniffing around, looking for new problems."

The hungry beast of government continues to prowl, and will only be stopped when it has starved itself into submission. Expecting this beast to put itself on a self imposed diet is not going to work.

It will continue to eat and continue to grow stronger - the best course now is to hibernate and get out of the way.

"WASHINGTON – A retired Army general is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation, his list of grievances including the systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely told WND he is calling for nationwide rallies and protests to demand the resignations and added that a peaceful “civil uprising is still not out of question.”

In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to Action” to force the resignations of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Vallely, formerly the deputy commanding general of Pacific Command, said the current crop of leaders must be forced to resign by the “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grass-roots protests and social networking. As an example, he cited the public and media pressure that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Impeachment, Vallely said, is not a viable option because of “partisan politics.”

“Our federal government continues down the path of destroying America,” he said. “Americans must now stand up and put America back on the right track.”"

More: https://www.hiddensecretsofmoney.com Welcome to the 5th episode of Michael Maloney’s Hidden Secrets Of Money. In this instalment, we travel to Berlin and Frankfurt, where we were able to film the money museum inside the Bundesbank…one of the world’s largest Central Banks.

This episode serves as an ideal primer for those waking up to the monetary matrix around them, as it clearly shows the history of true money and why it so important to our freedom. The quality of a society is directly proportional to the quality of its money. Debase a currency for long enough, and you end up with dangerous deficits, debt driven disasters, and eventually…delusional dictators. History proves this to be true.

The down side of opting out is it's the result they wish to achieve. They are pursuing a scorched earth policy with respect to the American economy, and when they force out businesses as many here have admitted, then they achieved that much more of their objective. Actually, I don't see any way we can stop the wrecking crew. The best we can achieve at this point is they don't get to keep the real estate or the government.

Several months ago, there was much discussion here about the divergence of paper gold and silver from the physical.

So far, we haven't seen that divergence.

However, the bankers continue to drive down paper prices on COMEX through unprofitable, concentrated, gigantic short sales, forcing GLD and other paper-PM holders to sell at low prices, and the banks then grab the underlying physical for delivery to China and elsewhere.

While reported stocks of COMEX and GLD gold are dropping like a stone, reported stocks of COMEX and SLV silver hardly budge. This is very, very strange.

Ever since gold and silver started trading, silver has been more volatile, and silver investors more fickle. Not this time!! Gold is taken down 20% or so, and all hell breaks loose as investors shed their gold positions--yet, silver is taken down 35% and all we get is investor yawns??? What world do we now live on? Bizarro-world, I'd say.

However, silver Eagle sales broke a record, and my on-line dealer reports a 4 week delay to get them, with no delays to get gold Eagles, or any other gold products for that matter.

There has also been discussion that the Chinese agreed not to sell USTs en masse in exchange for access to cheap, western gold so as to properly diversify before the bottom drops out of the financial system. Sort of an international quid pro quo between the elite bankers of both countries.

Turd is on record to say he thinks China will one day break the ice, and back their currency in some way with gold. Many other commentators have stated their belief that gold will be used, likely as a counterbalance in international trade, but will never be used as money by the people. More like FOFOA's freegold.

We know the PTB will do everything possible to maintain their grip on wealth and power. That is a given--DHS and FEMA were created just for that purpose. If they are able to maintain control, then I expect a type of freegold system to emerge, as bankers/CBs can then reprice gold in their possession to whatever level needed to get solvent and retain wealth.

If the system collapses, and the PTB lose control, it will be chaos for awhile until a new system emerges. What that system looks like is hard to say. Given enough time, gold and silver could become money among the people again.

Given the level of ignorance on the part of the people, I think the PTB will retain control for the foreseeable future, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. While we need to destroy the current fraudulent system, not enough people realize it yet, and don't know which side is the right side. We are getting there, but not there yet.

A gold-backed system at the international level (freegold) will save the PTB's hide for awhile, but their greed and powerlust will emerge again.

Anyway, when freegold emerges, or the great reset occurs in any form, only the phyzz will see it. Nobody will be allowed to become wealthy with paper gold. It cannot happen.

Same with silver. Silver may not be used as international debt resolution instrument, but silver has been suppressed even more than gold, due to its combination of being the monetary "canary in the coalmine" and its own fundamentals.

In fact, I think it is the shortage of silver in the world that is causing the gold issue to come front-and-center now, and over the last 12 months or so. They can't keep it going much longer, so they are getting their ducks in a row.

Some Sunday, soon I think, they will announce that COMEX trading of silver and gold will be halted, with all contracts to be settled at the previous Friday's closing price, in cash. GLD and SLV will be closed down, with all shareholders paid out in cash as of that same close. We know who will have control of the remaining phyzz.

Based on their rather surprisingly rallies off those lows, I'll be amazed if JPMorgan et al can spin the prices to new lows at this point in the roll-over cycle out of December, because that's what they'd have to do to get more technical fund/small trader long position selling/short position buying.

The last day for the big traders to be out of the December futures contracts is either today or tomorrow, and it would require a market intervention to the downside so obvious that even the precious metal miners might actually take notice.

He is not tne only one who carrefully wait for this lat try. We are all sitting here, like an ebay auction, waiting for the devil to offer a good entry point! This market has became a joke.

We're all products of 'The System'. Hence we've all been systemized. It's a stark realization when one understands they are a 'product', we've been built. Which leads to the question... "Who am I?"

So then how do we un-systemize ourselves? I wish there was a red pill. At this time I believe the answer is what it seems many of you are doing. Remove oneself from 'The System'. Do not actively, and as much as possible, passively participate in the system. Practically to me this means becoming as self-sufficient as possible. Create/control your food, power, water. Barter and PMs instead of fiat currency. Horse power instead of car power. Lastly it seems one must free the mind, and dare I say, spirit as well. All in all a substantial or radical change in lifestyle.

Hmm... other than the religious aspect, what I just described above sounds like the Amish.

As of now, it looks very interesting in COMEX Dec13 gold and silver. Organ's report had this info (paraphrased by me):

Tomorrow is first day notice, when those who want delivery must pay for it. as of yesterday, 10,400,000 ounces of OI gold were still standing--very high. And, the 3 dealers who have the gold to deliver only have 448,000 ounces in registered (deliverable) form right now. Wow! Something's gotta give.

In silver, there are 180,475,000 ounces of OI still standing for delivery. No doubt this will drop severely tonight, but there is only 44,000,000 ounces in registered form on COMEX, so the bankers need to do something, bigtime!

That's a really good question to ask, and perhaps the central one in the PM investing game over the next 10 years or so... on the one hand, all the reports (Shanghai gold exchange #'s, etc) indicate large acquisition of gold, on the order of thousands of tons, by the Chinese CB. I doubt they are doing that just to swim, Scrooge McDuck style, in their piles of gold... they obviously have a well thought-out reason for doing this. On the other hand, massive expansion on the monetary base, even more than the Fed and ECB, if recent reports are to be believed.

Could it be as simple as:

1. When they announce partial backing with gold, the value of their currency will skyrocket so they leverage these gains in terms of value by having a far larger monetary base already in existence when this happens

2. They do not want to torpedo their entire export market, so this expansion in the money supply is meant to mirror or absorb (to the downside) their expected gains when backing is announced so that they do not price themselves out of the export market entirely?

John Embry: I think an even greater probability is there is going to be another terrifying ‘Black Swan’ in the financial world that is going to take place. This is going to occur because the entire system is so ‘stretched’ and there are so many escalating problems. As an example, problems in Europe are rapidly accelerating, but if you look at the propaganda coming out of Europe you would believe everything is on the mend. I don’t believe that’s true in the least. We also have this situation in Japan, which, with all of the things going on in the world, is by far the most ludicrous because that country is so far gone they can’t see how to get back. I think that might be the tipping point as we near the end of the road here in terms of the end game. But in the fullness of time this will be seen as one of the greatest opportunities to buy physical gold and silver in size in history.

Richard Russell: Never buy gold for a profit, gold is a measure of wealth. Count your gold holdings in the number of ounces, not the current worth in dollars. You don’t price the home you live in every day, or with each passing week. Nor should you price your gold holdings in dollars with each passing day. Gold is a timeless wealth asset; an asset that will have a value with the passing of time. Remember this: Of the original issues that made up the Industrial Average, only one remains. And that stock is General Electric. And what happened to all the rest? In investing, nothing is permanent except gold. But remember, do not buy gold with the idea of making a profit. Buy gold because it is pure wealth, and may be the last man standing.

William Kaye: he most active series, currently, in the paper gold market is the option (contract) in December of 2015 at a $3,000 strike (price). It’s been extremely active in the last two trading days. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why would anyone in their right mind, with gold languishing around the $1,250 level, have any interest at all in an option series 2-years out, struck at $3,000, (which is) well in excess of the current price?’ And the answer is somebody thinks we are going to get there.

Ronald Stoferle: Austrians do not regard the rising demand for gold, oil, and other assets as the decisive factor behind rising prices. Rather, we consider the ongoing expansion of the money supply, which in our fractionally reserved banking system triggers an expansion of credit. The US manipulates reported price inflation rates for its own advantage. In the US, since the beginning of the 1980s the Bureau of Labor Statistics has “adjusted” the methodology of its inflation model 24 times. Why are inflation numbers manipulated? The reason for showing lower inflation is elementary. Numerous expenditures hinging on national insurance, government transfers, the salaries of civil servants, food stamps etc. depend on valorization. This way, real GDP growth is also revised up, since nominal economic growth is divided by the price index. Even if we are generally told that “an inflation rate of 2% is healthy”, this still translates into a loss in purchase power of 50% within 35 years.

William Kaye: Major bullion banks led by JP Morgan, which is the largest player, are now very long gold. The major bullion banks, who typically position themselves ahead of the next major move in either direction, are increasingly long, and on paper (they are) very net-long. The bearish news is we are not sure what their total picture is. By that I mean there is an enormous OTC market which is extremely opaque, and so it is very possible that they are net-short, and possibly very short in a very highly-levered but opaque OTC market. Another area that we have very little vision into are all of these unallocated gold accounts. I’ve been unable to find anything that estimates the ongoing liability from the IOU’s that are outstanding from all of these unallocated gold accounts that JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and the other bullion banks possess.

William Kaye on the metals exchanges: My suspicion is the entire (fractional reserve gold) system, probably within the next year, will go the way of ABN AMRO and Rabobank. They will all settle for cash when the market begins to make an important up-move which could be first quarter or second quarter of next year. People who thought they owned physical gold when the markets close are going to want to get exposure to gold, only this time it will have to be in the physical market, because the banks will be declaring force majeure, and the Comex will simply collapse -- they will force everybody out for cash, which their contracts allow to happen, and there will be this massive scramble for gold. At that point gold hits, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 an ounce, because there simply isn’t enough available gold out there to satisfy the 90 to 100 (paper) claims on every ounce of gold that exist.

William Kaye on the elites: There are insiders here who are in a position because of their inside knowledge to benefit from this intentional manipulation that is ongoing. These people, I suspect, are accumulating physical gold at artificially depressed levels. Certainly we’ve noticed some of these suspects converting at very attractive prices their holdings of GLD into physical. This typically gets reported in the mainstream media as Soros, or name another elite, selling or reducing their stake. And this just isn’t right. For the most part these entities are converting their (paper) gold into physical (gold) in lots of 100,000 (shares of GLD).

Bloomberg: In China, the gold rush continues as the Chinese buy jewellery, coins and bars as a store of wealth to protect from inflation. The world’s largest jewellery group, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd., established in 1929, saw sales jump 49% during the first half of 2013. Jewelers in China and throughout Asia are benefiting from continuing robust demand for gold. This has led Chow Tai Fook and jewellery outlets having to buy gold bars and rebuild gold inventories. Retail sales of gold tripled across China after the peculiar “flash crash” of April 15-16 when gold fell 10% in two days. Demand has remained robust and the recent weakness has seen continued demand.

James Turk: the rubber band is stretched pretty far at the moment. So the relief rally, when gold and silver bounce from these levels, should be a good one. We only have to wait for the options to expire for some sort of relief rally to start, and hopefully that rally will finally mark the beginning of a new and prolonged uptrend. I expect that the relief rally will begin as shorts cover before the US Thanksgiving holiday. It is important that the June lows in gold and silver have not been broken. Nor has the June low in the XAU, but it is threatening to do so. The HUI has already slipped below its June low. This drop in the price of mining shares is no doubt contributing to the all of the negative sentiment. The pessimism seems worse now than it was back in June.

Harvey: GOFO numbers are now very slightly increasing in the positive in the one month, decreasing in the 3 month, but all GOFO rates still positive. GLD: Gold was unchanged today at 849.91 tonnes. SLV: Silver lost 963,000 oz of silver inventory to settle at 10,329.99.

Damien McElroy (Telegraph UK): A senior advisor to the Saudi royal family has accused its Western allies of deceiving the oil rich kingdom in striking the nuclear accord with Iran and said Riyadh would follow an independent foreign policy. Nawaf Obaid told a think tank meeting in London that Saudi Arabia was determined to pursue its own foreign and policy goals. Having in the past been reactive to events, the leading Sunni Muslim nation was determined to be pro-active in future. Mr Obaid said that while Saudi Arabia knew that the US was talking directly to Iran through a channel in the Gulf state of Oman, Washington had not directly briefed its ally. "We were lied to, things were hidden from us," he said.

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